et another internet appliance, an internet phone, is about to hit the market. But unlike the other internet appliances, the internet phone promises to be a really handy product for the simple reason that it is not a new technology but a convergence of two existing stable technologies into a single device.

The internet phone integrates the functions of a regular telephone and internet surfing in a single box. This product will be launched in India in February by the consumer electronics company Thomson, under the brand name Webfone and priced at Rs. 13,000.

The most significant advantage of a Webfone is the facility of single button access to the internet or the e-mail. You need not go through the elaborate process of booting your PC, connecting to the net and then shutting it off particularly when you are only looking for a piece of information or checking a few e-mails.

You can connect to the internet by just pressing the internet button or check the inbox by pressing the mail button on the console.

For more surfing, there's stylus to navigate the net on the 7.5 inch LCD touch screen. To connect you to the web, the instrument comes with an inbuilt 33.6 kbps modem. The 600kb memory enables one to read and compose emails offline and you can access the email IDs from the address book but it can only download emails which are less than 300kb in size. The clarity and colour depth of the display is good and the brightness adjustable. At a size slightly larger than a normal phone, Webfone also looks elegant on the desk.

As with most other internet appliances, Webfone has a setup process so easy that even your grandmother can handle it effortlessly. The phone uses a customized browser which supports the main web standards like HTML 4.0. SSL 3.0 java 1.0, and java script apart from jpeg and gif for images. The fact that it supports .au and .wav is not very relevant to the music lovers as most music files available on the net are in the mp3 or real format. You can use HTML chat facilities and can also bookmark your favourite sites.

The phone features contain most of the features included by the latest tele-phone instruments available in the market. It has a good quality speaker phone for a hands-free mode of operation and an address book for storing 200 address which enables you to dial a number using the touchscreen along with a caller id facility.

This phone also has a facility to show the log of the last 20 calls received or made.

There are some disappointments though, with so many features built in, web touch could have done well with an answering machine and a printer port. While the fact that it only has a 33.6 kbps modem may cause some concern, it is not going to create much difference to the surfing experience as most of the pages are built on simple HTML and some amount of java script and hence hardly exceed 300-400kb.

This means that most of the pages download within five seconds. In any case you cannot view a flash based video using this phone. There are also certain things which it cannot do like open a mail bigger than 300kb and open an Excel or Word file like a PC does. But remember, it was never supposed to be a PC but only an internet access device.

All in all, the Webfone is worth a look if you are a sparse user of the internet or require a second internet terminal in your house.